54% Acrylic

David Harrower

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781780015828
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

When a young woman shoplifts for the first time, the store detective decides to give chase, but just how far is he prepared to go?

David Harrower's short play 54% Acrylic was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 8 July 1998. It was staged at Òran Mór, Glasgow, in April 2006 as part of the lunchtime A Play, a Pie and a Pint season.

54% ACRYLIC

David Harrower

54% Acrylic was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 8 July 1998, with the following cast:

GERRY	James Cosmo
MARION	Tracy Wiles
SUPERVISOR	Matthew Zajac
Director	Claire Grove

Characters

GERRY

MARION

SECURITY SUPERVISOR

A large department store.

GERRY. I watched her. She came in. I watched her come in and she went straight to the escalator. She was… nineteen… A girl. A woman… A girl. And she was wearing a blue jacket. She was nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. About that. Blue jacket and white jeans. And white trainers. White trainers that were dirty, that were scuffed.

She went to the escalator and she looked to me like she knew what she was there for. I think she knew what it was she wanted. She knew where it was.

And her hair was up. She’d tied it up like a lot of them… You see a lot of them wearing it like it now. The girls. Young ones. They tie it up… tie it back.

MARION. They weren’t where they were before. Everything was moved around again. It’s always happening in the big stores. I don’t know why they do it – it’s annoying. Is it ’cause there’s nothing else to do and they have to find the assistants something to do?

I found them eventually. They’d shifted them to a corner. All the reds had gone. There was only greens left – three left in the green. I couldn’t believe it. Two days ago, Wednesday, they’d had six or seven reds. Now they’d all gone. That’s what I went in for, that dress, to have a look at it again. I’d tried it on, the red – it had these thin, thin shoulder straps – and it looked beautiful. I thought it looked beautiful on me.

The green was a dark green; bottle green. Green’s not a colour I wear much – I thought it always made me look too pale, my skin. It was the shape of the dress I really liked, the length of it. I kept looking at it, trying to imagine it on me and I thought I might as well try it on. They had two of them in size ten, which is my size. I still had half an hour before I started back at my work.

GERRY. I was talking to… Who was I talking to? Someone. A colleague. One of the women there. I talk to a whole lot of people in a day, but the ones on the ground floor, the people, I don’t know as many as I used to. They change them all the time nowadays. There’s always new faces I never know the names of. I talk to whoever’s behind the counters or if there’s someone on the floor, maybe arranging stock. There’s always a joke or a story or… about the customers that’ve come in the store or one of the staff or the managers; our supervisors. Something’s always happening somewhere in the store. A child’s got themselves lost. Women faint. People are sick.

When I say – I don’t mean conversations, not a long conversation. We’re working so we can’t talk long. It wouldn’t look right.

MARION. It was the same girl that’s always there that was outside the changing room. She recognised me, I could see it, but her face stayed the same. She always looked at me the same. Like I should dress up just to go in there. I should apologise just for being there. Her hair looked brilliant. Expensive. And she’d been on a sunbed. People would say if they saw her on the street that she was beautiful, I think. They’d – a lot of people would turn their heads as she passed. She must’ve been used to that. I had the size ten and a size twelve, in case. I showed them to her and said two and she gave me a black plastic thing. I asked if she’d any reds left. She said if there’s none there, if there’s none on the rail then no, no, we haven’t, sorry. And the way she said sorry, I could’ve hit her.

GERRY. It might’ve been her face. It could’ve been something about her face – and the way she came in and walked straight to the escalator, without being interested in anything else. That could’ve been it. Most of them when they come in, they’ve planned the whole thing ahead.

We can usually tell with people. We just know. Because you learn to tell these things. Over time we learn to spot them – characteristics. And some of them, some of them just give themselves away. They don’t even know they’re doing it. They could just as well come in with a white bag with ‘swag’ written on it. With those people, we just know.

MARION. What was it? Gerry…? About me?

I know your name. You told me your name. Tell me… Gerry? What was it?

GERRY. It can be anything.

MARION. What…?

My face? Was it my face?

GERRY. It…

MARION laughs.

MARION. Was it written all over my face?

GERRY. No. It’s… I got a sense…

Maybe it was. Maybe it was your face when I saw it, yes. The way you were. The way you were acting. It can be a very simple thing. It needs to only be a small thing.

Pause.

MARION. Where were you?

GERRY. Where was I? On the ground floor.

MARION. When I came in…

GERRY. That was my floor. I…

MARION. Your floor?

GERRY. The floor I was covering. My floor. We’re each responsible for a floor. We get allocated a floor. I was standing at the doors. No, I was…

MARION. And you saw me…

GERRY. I was watching you. I was further in. I saw you. I was talking to one of the women that works there on the ground.

MARION. Yes. My face…

GERRY. Or something about you.

MARION. That you thought – her.

GERRY. Yes.

It could’ve been what she, the girl, was wearing, the blue jacket she was wearing that was… it – I didn’t get a good enough look – it was zipped up or… or unzipped. There was sunshine outside on the street. The sun was bright. It was warm. It was shining in the glass of the doors. It was maybe that. It was maybe that her jacket was zipped up.

Pause.

MARION. I looked at myself in the mirror for ages in the size ten. It showed off a lot of me. I could see my shoulders bare. I didn’t mind the colour of it, the green, now. I liked it on me. I didn’t think I would but I did. There were other mirrors so you could see it from the back and even from the back it looked good. I was thinking where I’d wear it, where out I’d wear it. And how many times. You wouldn’t see it in the pub. It was for a party or a… some special occasion. It was a dress people’d remember. They’d look at me in it and maybe they would… I don’t know, they’d… think things about me. They’d think I was such-and-such a person. But that’s alright just for a night. I told myself buy it, just buy it, you deserve it. I had the money – fifty quid – but I’d have nothing left for the weekend. I didn’t get paid for another two weeks. I thought I’d leave it for just now. I might see something somewhere else. And I could always come back for it. I’m in town every day, the centre of town, so I could always go back and get it. I didn’t even think.

GERRY. About what?

MARION. They’d have people like you. I should’ve thought.

GERRY. Like me?

MARION. Detectives. Store detectives.

GERRY. You shouldn’t think about me. It shouldn’t even cross your mind. Even if you look for me, you shouldn’t be able to spot me. I should be invisible. In the background. In my jeans and my jacket, every day, carrying a plastic bag or an umbrella or… like any other customer, you see.

MARION. It sounds, doesn’t it? – ‘detective...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Original Production
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information